§ 1. Just as in the human body there are as many troops of diseases as there are joints and members, so also in the great system of the state and of kingdoms there are innumerable calamities and modes of perishing. Sometimes pestilence depopulates entire nations, as did that one in the time of Gallienus which traversed the whole world. Famine is accustomed to precede or follow pestilence, and it itself sometimes devours the remnants of peoples. The very earth is provoked by the sins of men and is shaken: in the year of Christ 366 almost the whole world was violated by an earthquake. Add to these floods and fires, and whatever evil has befallen anyone which may rightly be feared by all. Some cities have been overthrown by feeble creatures. Pliny, Book VIII, chapter 29: “Nor are there less famous examples of destruction even from contemptible animals. Marcus Varro is an authority that a town in Spain was undermined by rabbits, one in Thessaly by moles; that a city in Gaul was driven out by frogs, one in Africa by locusts; that the inhabitants of Gyaros, an island of the Cyclades, were put to flight by mice; that in Italy Amyclae was destroyed by serpents. On this side of the Dog-Milking Ethiopians a region lies widely deserted, its people removed by scorpions and solifuges; and Theophrastus is an authority that the Thrarienses were driven away by centipedes.” Although a wise prince may moderate and alleviate the gravity of these evils by diligence, humanity, and liberality, they nevertheless do not come under the consideration of politics, since they can be averted and governed by no means except prayers and the amendment of morals.
§ 2. But the losses of the state with which the prudence of the prince is occupied are twofold. For either they arise from the city itself and adhere in its entrails, as fever, dropsy, and pestilence do in a man; or they are brought in from elsewhere, as hail, lightning, and arrows are. The internal evils are hatreds, contempt, factions, treasons, seditions, and rebellions. The external evil is war. Although, however, the causes of discords and seditions can be forestalled and excluded by those things which I have taught, it has nevertheless seemed good to dispute in separate books about sedition and war, lest anything which pertains to the perfect government of the state appear to be lacking.